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Book £12. 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

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A3ST ADDRESS 
DELIVERED IK 



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rinitg feljurclj, liobtiigion, m 



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Rev. C. G. CURRIE, R ector, 



April 16th, 1865, 



RESIDENT LINCOLN. 



A IN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED IN 



rtnitg ^Ijtirclj, ||0bhigt0tt, My. 

Rev. 0. G. OURRIE. Rector, 



April Kith, 1865, 



1 

\ 7 

COVINGTON, MAY 1st, 1865. 
Eev. C. G. Currie, 

Dear Sir : 
We beg to ask of you, for publication, your late sermon, preached 
on Easter Sunday Morning, April 10th, 1 805, upon the Assassination of 
President Lincoln, believing that its circulation will result in good. 

Trusting that our request will meet with your approval we remain, 
Very truly, your friends, 

J. H. FRENCH, 
JNO. W. BAKER, 
J. C. GEDGE, 
JOHN S. NIXON, 
R. G. MATHEWS. 
OLIVER PALMER, 
D. W. FAIRCHILD, 
N. C. MORSE, 
J. 11. MILLS, 
M. M. BENTON, 
M. BARE. 



COVINGTON, KY., MAY 20th, 1865. 
Gentlemen : 

In accordance with the request conveyed in your letter of the 1st 
inst, I herewith send you my sermon of Easter Morning for publication. 
I remain, Gentlemen, 

Very sincerely, your friend and Pastor, 

C. GEORGE CURRIE. 
Messrs. J. W. French. Jno. W. Baker, M. M. Benton, and others. 



This Republic has had during its existence many 
dark and melancholy days : 

There were the days of darkness in which your 
fathers planted it, days of poverty and ol blood. 
There have been in the continuance of its life days 
of internal striving, difficulty and fear. 

There have been, once more, in the past four 
years days of great alarm, almost reaching despair; 
and days of such slaughter, that their very hours 
seemed to run with blood, and their moments 
to trickle tears. 

The days of Sumter, the days of Bull Run, the 
days of Manassas, the days of Rich Mountain, the 
days of Donnelson, the days of Fredericksburg and 
Gettysburg, the days of the Rappahannock, with 
all the variety of horrible days that have rained 
American blood on the various other battlefields 
of Missouri, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and the 
Carolinas. 

Yet these days with all their darkness and tears 
were lighter, brighter, and purer for the nation than 
is this holy Easter morning: for with their suffer- 
ing, with all their red currents of flowing life, and 
their torrents of salt tears, there had not as yet 



[ -1 J 

been such events as fill our minds to-day. These 
minds should indeed be filled with thoughts the 
highest, holiest and most joyous conceivable. 
thoughts of a holy, holy Christ victorious over death 
and hell : but on the contrary, struggle against it 
as we may, we are abased rather than triumphant, 
for this morning our hearts are tilled with the 
contemplation of a murder — a murder of so dark 
a kind that we almost shrink from entering within 
the fringes of its horror to speak of it — a murder so 
penetrating the nation with grief that we can 
scarcely find relief in tears. 

This is a strange subject for an Easter morn- 
ing, but Good Friday and Easter have this year 
been strangely reversed, the mourning of the one 
was celebrated with the most abundant joy, the 
joy of the other has to be celebrated in mourning, 
and I believe that I should be doing violence t< i 
your feelings, as I certainly should to my own, did 
1 not give utterance to the emotions, and take the 
earliest opportunity of impressing upon you the 
lessons suggested by this fearful dispensation of 
God. 

I must first then take your minds not to the morn- 
ing eighteen hundred years ago, while it was yet 
dark, to the white robed angel rolling away the 
stone, or to the rising Jesus bursting the bonds of 
death. No, not to death the conquered, but to 
death the conqueror, to him who through the 



work of wicked hands is tin's Easter morning sleep- 
ing his last sleep, and to that darkened home 
where a woman, lately from her position (lie chief 
lady of the Commonwealth-, weeps with her chil- 
dren in the first days of widowhood. ! have to 
take you, or rather your minds have anticipated 
me and are already by the side of the mangled 
body of that great-hearted man. whose work of 
piloting the nation through its troubles had just 
reached its happy termination, when the honest 
kindly noble life was taken. Taken? Murderously 
robbed! Taken? Not as their life is taken, who 
through the extremity of years fall asleep in gentle 
decay. Taken? not as their life is taken who, with, 
fitting time for preparation lie down to die, amid 
the murmuring prayers of sympathizing friends, 
and the music of the praises of God. Taken? not 
even as their life is taken who render it a sacrifice 
for country under the hand of an open enemy, but 
taken by the blow of the infamous assassin! 

Ah! these wounds in the familiar and well known 
head, that in the past four years has throbbed with 
anxious deliberation for your welfare, these poor 
dumb mouths under this holy quiet sunlight are 
cozing out its life. In the kindly face so innocent oi 
guile, so often kindled with the sparkling of the 
cheerful yet sagacious pleasantry, in the heart that 
— for all he never said it — has had so much to bear 
from open and secret hate, and borne it all in such 



6 

a kind forgiving- way, in the mind that seemed 
so plain and humble, and craving almost to hide 
its greatness, from desire to be just like the people, 
in the many whose pictured form was borne as 
yesterday through the applauses of hundreds of 
thousands, in these there is no surviving power 
but that of moving our tears, and no eloquence 
but the silence of death. 



Abraham Lincoln lies this morning shrouded, 
and in a day or two will be buried. 

I have no language with which to express the 
sincerity of my grief, and the depth of my horror. 
A man, so. „ well and favorably known during his 
more private career ; a statesman, who, in the face 
of the civilized world, and it spite of false antici- 
pations — founded on the simplicity of his previous 
lite — has won so eminent a name. A ruler, who 
by these qualities, has obtained the extraordinary 
fortune of crushing a gigantic rebellion, with so 
great and yet so kindly a wisdom, that the very 
enemies who had uttered his name in curses, and 
for his sake had professed to hate their fatherland, 
at last gathered around hi in with the confidence 
that he was their truest and wisest friend — a magis- 
trate that was a perfect type of the highest class of 
character in a Republic, whose true national idea 
is a severe simplicity in mind, morals and manners, 
; > President that so seemed not far from every one 
of us as to appear united to each household in the 



Commonweal tli as if by a tie of tender relation- 
ship; this man, at the very crisis of his useful- 
ness, and amid the caressing applause of an affec- 
tionate people, whose tenderness for him and pride 
in him were almost without bounds — this man, by 
assassination, is stricken down from the embraces 
of his countrymen. It was but yesterday he was 
a king of men, not only in the eyes of his. count r\- 
men, but wheresoever on the earth principle and 
liberty are respected, yet to day there but remains 
a cold dead form, under the wreaths of a worlds 
applause, and the brow has fallen disfigured in the 
dust, at the very moment when the human race 
were unanimous in decking it with laurels. 

Dear Brethren I say not these things to excite 
you ; it is not surely the part of a Minister of 
Christ to add to the tire of animosity, but rather to 
pacify that craving for vengeance, which threatens 
to make the country only too familiar with such 
scenes. 

Yet it cannot be disguised, that this event has 
brought us to the edge of a mutual hatred, which, 
while it lasts, will exceed even that of the past, 
both in bitterness and in violence. You must, 
therefore, permit me on this subject to speak to 
you, as clearly as I can, the words of calmness and 
discretion. In the first place the South is accused 
of this murder. You should weigh this accusation 
well, and examine it with the most scrutinizing in- 



8 

vestigation. If, thereafter, you shall discover that 
it is the result of a conspiracy on the part of those 
leading men who represent that section, or if you 
shall find that the bloody issue is but the expres- 
sion of the desire of that people, they are then 
guilty in the sight of God and men of the crime of 
murder, and seem to be no longer fit to reside upon 
a common territory with good men. 

But, just because of the heinousness of the ac- 
cusation, and just because the conviction of them 
in such guilt precludes all possibility of that co- 
residence with them, and that Union, which all 
your dead of the past four years have devoted their 
lives to secure, and which was the highest ambition 
of the great dead President himself, even for these 
reasons it becomes you that not a step be taken, 
that not a judgment be formed, that if possible not 
a suspicion be entertained till the requisite evi- 
dence be supplied, and the horrible case is sifted. 

Even at the risk of fretting you in your present 
feelings of indignation, I must remind you that no 
such proof has as yet been adduced, while, by all 
the bitterness and even bloodshed they are liable 
to cause, I must warn you against the wild unreas- 
oning language, on this subject, of the mass of 
public speakers. I must ask you to wait for evi- 
dence of Southern sympathy with this crime, ere 
you utter a threat or even form a judgment against 
them as a people. I must remind you that, infam- 



9 

ous as this assassination is, it has had its parallel 
in all civilized nations. The life of Napoleon was 
six times attempted, the life of Louis Phillippe 
four times, and the life of the present Queen of 
England and Emperor of France not less frequent- 
ly, in all of which eases the act was that either of 
a single madman, or else it resulted froj^the con- 
spiracy of some two or three persons only. By all 
the struggles then for a united country, which have 
occupied the past four years, by the tens of thous- 
ands of the noble dead who have fallen to secure 
their country's honor, and thereby its greatness, 
and by the example on this behalf of the late Pres- 
ident himself I beseech of you, and especially of 
the more influential among the people, to make 
every effort while in the present uncertainty to re- 
strain yourselves from conduct or language sug- 
gested by mere passion. 

If you find, as I pray to God you shall find, that 
this murder is almost as deeply regretted by the 
inhabitants of one section as by those of another, 
and that the tidings are received by them with a 
horror equal to your own, then, so far from this 
event producing such results as w T e dreaded the 
death of this second Father of his Country shall 
be a moving occasion for reunion. The wicked 
tendency ot this "Evil Spirit" in the land may be 
so betrayed by this enormity, as to disgust even 
the "possessed." 



10 

As under an overruling Providence the rebellion 
from the beginning has been making away with 
itself, so this may be to such a degree its final act 
of suicide as to excite the abhorrence of the South 
equally with the North, and thus across the Presi- 
dent's open grave, the sundered brethren may join 
hands with a grip made all the closer by the sym- 
pathy of horror and grief. 

They, as well as you, have reason to grieve for 
him whose continual labor it was to temper justice 
with an overflowing mercy, who often to some ap- 
peared as if apt to endanger national union, by his 
struggle to secure a people's unity in mind and 
feeling, who by his efforts in this direction, in the 
instances of Louisiana and Virginia, by the absence 
in his conduct of anything like vulgar triumph 
over the vanquished, by the tender and considerate 
kindness with which he spoke even of the last de- 
feated General, showed himself almost inclined to 
sacrifice his own name and reputation to secure the 
grand object dearest to his heart. God grant they 
may see it and act accordingly. 

But, if on the other hand there be any whose 
natures are so vile as to rejoice over this infamous 
guilt, for such conduct, if existing, I, with you, can 
entertain nothing but feelings of execration. 

If there be to-day on the face of the earth a 
creature, more than another abhorred by mankind, 
it is he who has slain the President. 



11 

But they who can rejoice at his act are murder- 
ers with him. Mankind turns its face from them 
with revolting ; they are a subject for loathing to 
the four quarters of the earth. Did 1 know any 
such, and 1 thank God 1 know none, from their in- 
timacy, their acquaintanceship, from mere speech 
with them, I beg to hold myself excused. 

Let me speak of myself lor ;i moment. 1 have 
not, it is true, as yet the privilege arm "honor of 
being a citizen of this Kepublic, but have the hon- 
or to be the subject of another State. I occupy 
the humble office of Minister of the Gospel, 
in the Church planted by the Apostles of Christ, 
but, even as a subject of a country against which 
you are strongly prejudiced, as a Minister of Christ, 
nay, even as a man, I can have no fellowship, no, 
nor even acquaintanceship with any, that through 
rejoicing at such an act are accomplices of murder, 
whose heart is in the sight of God as the heart of 
the assassin. 

I have still to speak to another class of persons: 
to those namely, who, through birth and circum- 
stances have been placed for the last four years in 
the very peculiar position of having a judgment 
on the side of a united country, and affections on 
the side of the rebellious section of it 

These persons have my sympathy, they have more, 
many of them have my regard, which in all the 
events of the past I have neither been afraid nor 



12 

ashamed, though at the risk of my own reputation 
for honesty and consistency, frequently to express. 
I have felt with their grief, I have mourned over their 
dead, I have done my utmost to act toward them 
as to others the part of a shepherd of the flock. 
But it is my duty to impress now the fact, that 
the only remaining opportunity of relieving them- 
selves, in the minds of the people, from the perpet- 
ual ignominy which must attach to that side, 
which, whether justly or unjustly, is believed tu 
use assassination as one of its instruments, the 
only opportunity is the present. I must ask them 
at once to rally on the side of their whole country, 
and not only by public expression to testify their 
horror at this infamous event, but in season and 
out of season to labor generally for those happy 
results which, if accomplished without them, can 
only cover them with a disgrace that must descend 
to their children's children. 

It is the eleventh hour. For their own sake 
therefore, for their families sake, and that they 
may avoid the unavailing regrets of the future, I 
suggest that those who may be classed in this cat- 
egory hold a public meeting, expressing their ab- 
horrence of this murder, and their determination 
to support the Government. This is a very extra- 
ordinary thing for me to do, but the circumstances 
are extraordinary, and did these persons rightly 
estimate the outraged feelings of the people, the 
suggestion would be immediately accepted. 



13 

It is quite likely that what 1 have said may 
alienate from me some whom I have addressed, 
but however much, on some accounts this may be 
regretted, yet my course to-day is plain, rendered 
so by convictions of duty even to them, still more 
to the country and the Government, and if any, 
on account of this, see fit to withdraw from my 
ministry, I can only attend them with my prayers 
that they come to a better mind. 
# # # ##### 

It may seem to you as if the subject in the 
people's hearts to-day can have little connection 
with the thoughts of Easter, and yet in my mind 
such connection can be found, even in those links, 
which in the Gospel of Christ, join together Death 
and Eesurrection. How horrible, Brethren, were 
this day to the widow of the Great Dead, were there 
no resurrection. 

Before her lies the ghastly termination of a life- 
time of care. It is a peculiarly care worn face, and 
death to all appearance has got the victory over 
his noble labor and his goodness. Oh ! God where 
the profit of the struggling and toil? If this life 
be all, it surely had been better that the great man 
had never known higher position than that ob- 
tained by honest and wise integrity among his 
native hills of Kentucky— better on an humble farm 
to have dwelt in undisturbed peace, plowing the 
field and sowing the grain. Better the calm re- 



14 

tirement, better his name had never been known 
beyond his native country, for so his life had been 
comparatively free from care, and after flowing as 
a placid stream through a quiet unambitious secur- 
ity, it would in all likelyhood have had longer time 
to prepare for passing to that eternity down to 
which it had peacefully glided. 

That face, now so disfigured, might have long- 
lived in ruddy health, the hair would have grown 
gray amid the loving respect of his neighbors ; his 
children had not been left early orphans, or his 
wife in the loneliness of premature widowhood. 
But as it is, what has there been to him but strife 
and hatred, wrath and envying, years of sleepless 
nights and harrowing days, in which at times he 
was almost crushed by despair. 

What in the mind of God, who from the begin- 
ning contemplated the end, what has the greatness 
been, the pomp of position, or the applause, what 
have they been but a funeral pageantry conduct- 
ing him to the grave? But nay, nay! not only had 
this not been better for millions of men, and women 
and children in this world, but it had not been 
better for his own eternity; since, if conscientious 
struggle for right be there a holy thing, and the 
work of conferring freedom on millions of the poor 
be there a thing grand and good, and if by the 
resurrection of the great Saviour of the race, the 
eternal reward of such be secured, then thanks be 



15 

to the giver of all good gifts, for bestowing on him 
even this fatal eminence. 

The Christ has risen the first fruits of them thai 
have fallen asleep in the gratitude of humanity 
and the blessings of the poor. Nay the Christ, 
with those that thus sleep in Him, liveth forever, 
and therefore no such life can be in the final end ;i 
failure. The scene of reward is only changed to a 
more continuing city, henceforth the applause is 
from the mouth not of perishing men, but of the 
immortal redeemed, and in that High Common- 
wealth, "that cannot be moved," there is no more 
going out for ever from the honor it bestows, or 
from the freedom it confers from all care, sorrow, 
crying and death. 

Let this awful event, finally, impress even your- 
selves with the uncertainty of human things. We 
little thought, when last Sunday, we pressed the 
argument drawn from the weakness and ignorance 
of the human creature in favor of the worship of 
the Great Creator, that Ave should have so soon 
thus fearful an illustration. The President of this 
Republic hurried to eternity in a night, to dilate 
upon it, would only weaken it, therefore I appeal 
to you by this death, to be yourselves so reconciled 
to your God as to become by fitting and timely prep- 
aration ready for your own latter end, and when yon 
kneel to-day at the Holy Communion commemo- 
rating the Great Death of the Saviour, pray, pray, I 



• 16 

beseech you, that when at last the same event comes 
upon yourselves it may find that through the blood 
of Jesus, as was the purpose of it, your lamps may 
have been so trimmed and oil so burning as to light 
your way securely through its shadows to the 
presence of the holy saved and the risen Saviour. 
And now to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the 
Truth amid all Providences, the Way in all darkness, 
and the only Life in time and in eternity, be all 
glory, dominion and praise, for ever and ever. — 
Amen. 



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